it's time to get the hell outta this place...

it started out kind of "blah" today. my next door neighbor (when i say this, don't think of apartment dwellings or anything. there's a seven foot tall wall between us with about 3 feet of open space above it to the ceiling...) had guard duty this morning, but i didn't know that. so i woke up and the lights were off (the light switch is on his side of the wall) and so i thought he was still asleep. so i moused around until almost noon, trying not to make too much noise. the two of us keep getting hit up with stupid tasks that keep one of us, or the other or both up till all hours of the night so we get kind of protective of each other's sleep. finally about noon i popped my head over the wall, saw he wasn't there and finally started packing and getting stuff done. took a late lunch with a guy who came up to fix some equipment we have. he hadn't seen this base before, so instead of going back to work after lunch, i drove him around some. when i got back to the house, i did some more packing and then realized that the guy who normally runs everyone's laundry in wasn't here today and i probably better pick up the slack. by this time my neighbor was back from guard duty so he pitched in. we dropped the laundry off and picked up the clean stuff and realized we really didn't want to go back to the house yet. it was a BEAUTIFUL day here and we had a hmmwv with no doors or top on it. so we just went cruising around the base. just went crazy climbing up on top of all this gear and taking silly pictures, drove a little faster than we probably should've, and enjoyed the wind on our faces.

so if we had such a great end to the day, why is it time to get out of here? at the dining facility for dinner tonight, we were looking around and laughing at all the pink faces. today was the first WARM day here this year. we've had warm days, but not like today. and for the last week it's been cold and rainy and overcast. alot of people got sun today. it was so warm that when i went to take a shower tonight, i actually had cool water and it felt great. it's warming up here, and all i could think about in the shower was how hot and miserable it got last last year over the summer. 140 degree heat, vehicles overheating, kevlar helmets and body armor, carrying a basic load + of ammo for two weapons and water and all the electronics equipment whenever we got out of a vehicle... being away from the base for days so having to get into the same salt-crusted uniform for a couple days in a row because we were packing light... it got so hot last year that a guy burnt his toungue on water that was sitting on top of the transmission housing. we used to have to sit on towels in the vehicle to keep from burning ourselves and this was with the a/c running! so i'm more than happy to miss that heat this summer.

today was awesome though...